Apple settles "millions of colors" class-action lawsuit

Apple has settled with two professional photographers who had charged the company with falsely advertising the quality and capabilities of its MacBook and MacBook Pro notebook displays.

The out-of-court settlement, for which terms were not disclosed, brings to a close a 10-month old class-action lawsuit filed by San Diego, Calif. residents Fred Greaves and Dave Gatley.

In the suit, first reported by AppleInsider last May, the pair cried foul on the part of Apple's marketing lingo, which advertised that both the MacBook and MacBook Pro included displays capable of supporting "millions of colors" and offering views "simply unavailable on other portables."

Instead, they charge that the Intel-based notebooks were only suited to display the "illusion of millions of colors through the use of a software technique referred to as 'dithering,' which causes nearby pixels on the display to use slightly varying shades of colors that trick the human eye into perceiving the desired color even though it is not truly that color."

Greaves and Gatley, both professional photographers, argued that the misrepresentation was critical given that members of their profession rely on the accuracy of the displays for properly editing imagery. They asserted that, even at their highest resolutions, the notebook displays are unreliable for post-production purposes.

In addition to false advertising and misrepresentation, the photographers also charged Apple with violating the Unfair Competition Law and the Consumer Legal Remedies Act for its failure to properly address and rectify the situation.

There's no word yet on the steps necessary for other proposed class members to take advantage of the settlement.

Good for them. I think this is one case Apple deserved to lose. Especially in the MacBook Pro, I would expect better quality displays. It almost seems like this should have been cause for class action since they deceived everyone who bought one.

Clearly a case where there was no financial benefit to continuing with the case, even though Apple were clearly not in the wrong.

If you want to see a bad laptop screen, look at Dell's offerings. My work Dell D820's screen is terrible, far far worse than my iBook's screen which is two years older yet somehow (temporally?) dithers the screen correctly.

Remember that all colour LCD screens can only show three colours - Red, Green and Blue!

Sure, each can be shown at different brightnesses (typically 64 levels of brightness on a TN display) and the colours are arranged to get 64*64*64 spatially dithered colours, which is extended by further spatial and temporal dithering in a way that the human eye cannot detect (although it can be done incorrectly or badly or left out).

Temporal dithering is easiest - you can get 13/128ths by simply temporally dithering 6/64ths and 7/64ths brightness, for over 2 million colours on screen. You can also show the first 1/4 of the time, and the latter 3/4 of the time to get 27/256ths, allowing you over 16 million colours. There are advanced algorithms to randomise the temporal and spatial dithering so the eye doesn't pick up patterns as well. Clearly these are broken on the Dell D820 Maybe they were broken on the MacBook as well? Maybe it was a software issue in the driver...

I think Apple should stick out their neck and address this. Given the number of creative professionals who use Apple hardware and the professional appeal of the MacBook Pro, they should say something about this limitation. I would like to know if OEMs are working on true 8-bit-per-color displays in the space that would feed notebooks.

From what I have read, Apple's claims seem to be industry standard. This is kind of like the issue with 1GB of disc storage really being 1000 MB and not 1024MB.

Apparently, Apple makes claims on the "millions of colors" exactly the same way other laptop manufacturers do.

So much for the "Think Different" mantra then. They can say they're better than everyone else, but then selectively default to industry standard shenanigans when it suits them.

But I really don't see the GB thing being a problem, it's the computer that doesn't report that properly. The display makers/sellers make the distinction harder to understand than it needs to be, much like how the USB association allowed or made the full speed / high speed shenanigans.